I suspect we did not come to be abductive.  Rather abduction was always there abd those of us who cvarried it were more fit for survival, and so by natural  selection humans who were inclined to make abductive interpretations of events passed on their genetic inclination for thinking abductively. and so we are here today, with this capacity.  my thoery, or better hypothesis is itself wild abduction.  but think about what hume says.  deductive reasoning, ie, really rigorous, accurate reasoning, does not yield all those inferences we employ in daily life. these typical reasioning type he calls inductive, is of course what he calls a problem viz the problem of induction (he is referring to the abductive generalzation), and these hume calls the crude reasoning of th masses, but these help us live. can you imagine yourself daily worrying if the chair you sit on might sinkinto the ground?  yet to have the general inductive or abductive faith  that it will not is actually poor reasoning, on deductive thinkings measure. just as well, whilst deductively indefensible, our inductive poor judgements turn out for the most part to be corroborated daily, by sheer chance. so my guess is, those who reasoned poorly, to a certain extent, had an evolutionary edge over those who reasoned too accurately.  its ironic, but i think its true.  and thise who would livetheir lives as if they could believe only what is deductively defensible, we might classify as mentally unwell or paranoid...whereas a logician might actually attest that they have sound reason on their side. but Bob you asked a very interesting question.  So our abductive skills if you like, on my theory, started out as a weakness from the point if view of rationality, but that weakness led to very benefiial side effects for our capcity to survive.

of course this could all be wrong.  it is after all, an abduction merely.

Jude



, 
________________________________________
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Bob Este [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 1:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: How did we come to be abductive?

Dear all:

I've been reading and reflecting upon the recent exchanges about
abduction, etc., and will not here apologize at either the beginning of
this message or its conclusion for "too many words" or "fanciful notions".

What is offered here is, I trust, in keeping with the exploratory spirit
and intent of Peirce /et al/.

It is also my hope that what is offered here may be somewhat helpful for


True that this didn't happen yesterday, but:  also very much the case
that -- here we are.

Unbroken chains and all that. And most probably, all of us are the
result of countless numbers of such chains.

So:  what was the most valuable, the most significant constellation of
capabilities passed on from one generation to the next?

Could thinking about this question illuminate the "core" of what we have
(relatively recently) come to denote as "abduction"?

E.g., figuring out how to make the best decisions under /any/
circumstances, whether the most secure and pleasant and safe, or the
most urgent and threatening and pressing -- and pass that successful
"figuring" on to fellows and to later generations who could live to see
another day? And improve that figuring for the ones after that? And
then, after that, to do perhaps even better?

Critics might leap upon this little speculative story with spectacular
verve and energy comparable to that of the cat that sunk its razor-sharp
fangs into the skull of our presumed ancestor, crushing the last sparks
of life from that hapless individual.

But, in all seriousness, how do /you/ think it might be that we humans
came to be, more or less, successfully abductive -- under what pathways
and flows of conditions did we, collectively, come to reason, somewhat
reliably (it seems), to the best explanation?

And, how did we usefully come to explore this thing we now hold up
before us, that we turn and examine from side to side in the gleaming
light, and that we claim is something that could help us understand our
own "reliable reliability" of learning and knowing?

Could this help explain how we have come to engage in what we claim to
know of as "design"?

Just some late night thoughts ...

Best wishes to all,

Bob Este, Ph.D
Owner and CEO
VectorRDI Ltd.
Cochrane, Alberta, Canada








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